When Destiny Brings the Demon

Zou Yan (邹雁) is an ordinary modern office worker who stumbles into the cultivation world and wakes up as Liao Tingyan, a disciple of the Qinggutian sect (清谷天). The first episode plays like a job application: she passes a crowded group interview at the Three Sacred Mountains (三圣山), described as the immortal world's big corporation, and is picked to serve the sect's reclusive ancestor-master, Sima Jiao.

Officially he is in seclusion. In truth he has been sealed inside a mountain for 500 years, and isolation and rage have made him cold and volatile. Liao Tingyan does not know that the body she now lives in once belonged to a demonic assassin. What she wants is to do as little as possible and survive, and that indifference is what draws Sima Jiao's curiosity. Around them, fellow disciples such as Ye Ruling (夜洳凌) and the snake spirit Hei Ershijiu (黑廿九) have agendas of their own.

The setting is a fantasy cultivation realm, filmed at Hengdian World Studios (横店影视城) between December 15, 2023, and April 8, 2024. It adapts the novel Xiang Shizu Xianshang Xianyu (《向师祖献上咸鱼》, "presenting a salted fish to the ancestor-master") by Fu Hua (扶华). Xianyu is also internet slang: a "salted fish" (咸鱼) is someone who lies flat and does the minimum, which is exactly Liao Tingyan's philosophy.

Wen Deguang (温德光) directed. It premiered on Youku on August 16, 2025, as the first xianxia title in the platform's Shenghua Theater (生花剧场) line, and is on Netflix overseas. Youku's pre-release reservations passed three million, according to Yangzi Evening News.

The English-language review site Chasing Dramas gave it 6.5 out of 10, praising the early comedy and the leads' chemistry while finding the second half drawn out.